The present invention relates to a method for locating a mobile station. More particularly, the present invention relates to detecting the position of a mobile station in a cell area based on certain received signal characteristics.
In emergency situations it is critical to know the location of the emergency and where help needs to be sent. This is easily done with communication systems that are wired. For instance, it is well known that when a wire line subscriber activates an emergency code such as "911" facilities can determine the location of the user so that assistance can be sent to that location.
It is equally important to provide emergency assistance to those who may not have access to a wire line connection, such as a person in a vehicle. Such persons may utilize mobile communication devices such as mobile cellular phones. However, it is more difficult to provide such assistance just by the nature of the communication instrument, in that the instrument can be moved to many different locations. Thus, it would be desirable to provide a method by which the location of a mobile station could be determined quickly and simply.
A number of prior systems for mobile system location identification have detected signal strengths to perform triangulation. This is a complex solution which requires real time calculations related to signal strength measurements. A more simple solution to the problem is desirable.